The Ethics of Online School for Adolescents and Children
When considering the ethical dilemma behind whether schools should be in person or online, we must take into account the psychological, social, and economic health of students, teachers, and parents, in addition to prioritizing the fight against Covid-19. Over the past year, the consequences of online schooling on school-aged children have changed from hypothetical consequences to realities. Research shows that higher levels of problematic social media and video game engagement have significant correlation to higher levels of psychological distress in school-aged children. Online schooling and stay-at-home mandates have naturally led to a massive increase in both social media and video game consumption among all people, and most significantly among young students. This places them at risk of extra psychological distress piled on top of stressors they are already facing, such as puberty and navigating their changing relationships with parents. There is also research that reveals that the risk of childhood weight gain and obesity increases when students are out of school and exposed to lower quality food and decreased physical activity. With stay-at-home orders, these particular concerns have gotten much worse by sheer length of confinement in the home. It is also important to note that across the board, we are also seeing the most significant negative consequences are most prominent among students of color, along with the fact that already wide achievement gaps and economic divides are getting drastically wider.
The stakeholders involved in online schooling decisions include: students, teachers, parents, schools (including staff and administrators), and the government. Students care far less about their schooling than they care about interacting with friends and teachers at school and developing socially. At the same time, they want to avoid spreading the virus to their parents, grandparents, and friends. Parents (especially single parents) were already struggling to juggle work and parenting pre-Covid, and now they have severely limited access to childcare and other services schools provide to help support families, such as school lunch. They are concerned about financially supporting their children, but also preserving the health and safety of their families. Teachers want to preserve relationships with their students, as well as to continue teaching them subject matter, but they are untrained to be writing curriculum and teaching for online learning. They also don’t want to expose themselves to the virus in the classroom, in addition to the psychological toll they would experience if they return to in person learning, and students in their class were to get sick or even die from the virus. Schools are concerned about keeping their teachers and staff employed, and they are also concerned about meeting standards and benchmarks in order to continue to receive funding and accreditation as a school. The government must balance the health and safety of their population, including children, while also helping the economy to function now and in the future.
Taken from a Rights Perspective, we consider how the choice to keep schools completely online would affect each of the stakeholders. All school-aged students have a right to education, and they also have the right to receive support as they develop intellectually, socially and physically. Online schooling protects them from spreading the virus and continues to encourage intellectual learning, but it also infringes on their rights to interact with peers and to learn how to become a full acting member of society. Parents have a right to work for an income for their families, and to make decisions regarding the education of their children. Online schooling has hindered many parents’ ability to work, and therefore has infringed on their right to an income. In mandating online school, parents have also experienced an infringement on their feelings of control over the quality of their childrens’ education, because they are left with so few options. Teachers have the right to be compensated fairly for their work. As a society we were already struggling to pay teachers fairly for their work, but Covid has required more work for teachers in a task for which they have received no training, and yet they are receiving the same low salary as before. On the other hand, if they return to the classroom, teachers are being asked to take on the psychological burden of the health of their students, in addition to exposing themselves to potential health risks with regard to Covid. Schools exist as entities to serve the needs of students, teachers, and parents, so they do not have rights in themselves. When schools require continued use of standardized testing and strict benchmarks despite online schooling, they are infringing on the rights of the people they serve to choose what and how they learn in a way that will benefit them the most. Governments have the responsibility to do what is best for their citizenry, as well as to protect their rights. People have the right to collectively determine what decisions are made by their government, so governing bodies must consult the people when they make such decisions as online vs. in person school. When stay-at-home orders are implemented, one perspective is that the government is infringing the rights of individuals to choose whether or not to put themselves and their families at risk.
Online school has increased already wide achievement gaps in schools, as well as overall wealth gaps in society, and thus we must examine how a Justice/Fairness Perspective on ethics would view these various consequences. Online learning is not fair to students, because it is disproportionately damaging the already vulnerable student population based on race, class, and ability. In fact, anything but perfect access to resources leads to a much lower quality of education for students. Students who experience a lack in resources deserve to be given increased support in order to balance out inequities, but thus far there has been very little compensation from schools and government to give them the support that they need. This defends the argument for returning to in-person classrooms. Online schooling also unfairly asks young people to sacrifice important developing time in favor of preserving the lives of older people. With online learning, parents and teachers are both being unfairly asked to take on roles for which they are unprepared and untrained. In general, it is arguably unfair to ask every individual to disrupt their life in favor of the overall population. From the school’s perspective, what is fair is consistent standards and benchmarks across many classrooms. Online schooling poses a challenge to this standard, because there are as many online school experiences as there are students, based on varying home circumstances and resources access. In this Buzzfeed article, one former Comcast employee recounts receiving phone calls about internet service: “‘I had a parent call in who has four kids — two were in college, two in high school and middle school,’ he said. ‘They were paying for a second internet connection at their house, both for 1-gigabit-per-second download speed, to make sure all the kids had no problems. I was just like, Wow, the privilege to be able to do that when there are for sure kids in the same district who can’t even get a connection, and they’ll be graded the same.’” Schools are now facing the dilemma of how to keep academics fair for all students, even though they come from unfair circumstances. The government is also responsible for combatting injustices in society, so their stake is in the widening wealth gaps that are growing at an alarming rate because of online schooling.
The Utilitarian Perspective brings up the question of what does it mean to have a “good” outcome vs. a “bad” one? One “good” outcome of returning to in person schooling is the economic perspective. Students would return to a higher quality education, which prepares them to be more competent contributors to a future economy. Parents who have been tethered to the home while their children are doing school from home can now return to contribute to their jobs to participate in the economy. Schools would also benefit from the potential return to normal graduation rates and high standards, which would bring more funding and general success to their district. The rate that teachers are leaving the field may drop due to the return to normalcy that a return to schools could potentially bring. The government especially would have less to compensate for (such as stimulus checks) if children were in schools and the economy was running smoothly again. This return to normalcy works great for the majority of individuals, if we were to come to terms with how increasing exposure to Covid in schools will likely result in the loss of many lives inside and outside of the schools. The Utilitarian Perspective argues that the number of lives lost will still be less than the number of people who benefit from the return to school, so a return to school is the best option.
The simplest of the ethical arguments in favor of online schooling is the Common Good Perspective. Students, teachers, and parents may be experiencing difficulties in their lives as individuals as a result of the pandemic, but overall our society is healthy and less at risk of spreading the virus if we keep school online. School-aged students are not the majority of people, so the Common Good Perspective would say that serving their best interests cannot take precedence over the general welfare of our society. The same can be said about the interests of teachers and parents. When schools are following mandates to stay virtual, they are supporting the common good by preserving the health of citizens. By nature, the government cares much less about individuals than it does about the greater society, so their motivations are naturally skewed in defense of the common good, which will be reflected in whatever the constituents support. In this case local governments have made choices about mode of schooling based on the status of Covid in their specific geographic area. In most cases they are choosing what will serve the most people, while continuing to fight the spread of the virus.
From the Virtue Perspective, online schooling is the most logical option, but only if as a society we make choices that lead us to be the kind of ethical society we hope to be. Ideally, we would be supporting those who are disproportionately challenged by online schooling, in which case we could serve the purpose of preserving the health of the general population, while also continuing the education and development of our youth. Students from a Virtue Perspective would be graciously sacrificing some of their socializing and individual gain for the sake of the health of others, if they were to be schooled online exclusively. If schools were led by the Virtue Perspective of this ethical dilemma, they would provide teachers with training to cope with virtual learning and higher salaries, as well as requiring reasonable standards of learning. Along with that, teachers could write curriculum based on the development of important skills that students are excited about. In the ideal virtuous society, education would be helping students to develop creatively as well as intellectually, which could be accomplished virtually while we fight the Coronavirus. One example of our government taking on the Virtue Perspective is the distribution of stimulus checks. In this way they have shown that they trust their citizens to use their money in a way that would stimulate the economy and help us overall become the society we aim to be.
Personally, I subscribe to the Virtue and Justice/Fairness Perspectives. Optimism and hope for a better society lead me to support online learning for the sake of health and safety, but only if it were accompanied by increased support for our disadvantaged community members as well as teachers. Thus far during the pandemic there has been a disappointing lack in supporting equity (for example, insufficient internet access for many students), so instead, I turn to the Justice/Fairness approach. School-aged students are arguably the most impacted by online schooling, because it has disrupted key years of development physically, emotionally, and socially, that will impact the rest of their lives. They have the most to lose and the least to gain when schooling is all online. In defense of the young people and the economically vulnerable, I personally support the return to in-person schooling, while I also acknowledge the complexity of this particular ethical dilemma.
Last March, the decision to go online was very easy. The question was “do we care more about school, or survival?” Now, however, as society is learning about the many consequences associated with online schooling, we face the ethical dilemma of choosing between two extremely important options: the health of our overall population, or the development of our young people and subsequently our future society.
